He momentum It is to American politics what the duende is to flamenco art: it arrives or it does not arrive, and there is no point in forcing it. Political strategists, journalists, pollsters and other exegetes of the campaign that pits Donald Trump against Kamala Harris are trying to decipher whether or not Trump is living his momentumthat’s how it is what they call in Washington to that boost in the polls, brought about by the situation and a certain alignment of the stars. It is important to resolve that doubt, because nine days before the election, it could be the definitive push that returns to the White House four years later the man who left office by instigating an insurrection on January 6, 2021.
Trump has been improving in the polls for five weeks, both nationally and in those of the seven key states, and that has allowed him to reduce the slight difference that his Democratic opponent had gained from him in a fight that otherwise has proven practically immune. to the sensational events of recent months, including two assassination attempts. The forecasts, which even predict a tie in the electoral vote (a scenario unprecedented for 20 years), show totals so close that it is not possible to draw any conclusions. definitive about what will happen on November 5.
Before, for weeks, the momentum It was Harris, whose entry into the campaign after Joe Biden’s resignation in July to pursue his re-election as president of the United States improved the expectations of a party with a too-old candidate who was piloting the ship towards disaster. The replacement unleashed an enthusiasm that her popularity as vice president did not recommend taking for granted. And that’s how the millions of dollars in donations, the thousands of volunteers and the cascading support of celebrities catapulted in record time a campaign built around words like “freedom”, slogans like “when we fight, we win” and a commitment to the future versus the return to the past that the Trumpist slogan defends Make America Great Again (let’s make America great again).
But summer gave way to autumn, and the Kamala effect it was getting colder. The push from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August and the good performance in the only debate, held on September 10, in which Trump has agreed to face her were the last accelerations of a campaign that since then seems to have lost steam.
Words and deeds
Then came the face-to-face between vice presidents, in which the Democratic candidate, Tim Walz, fell into almost all the traps of his rival, JD Vance, who, between mutual displays of courtesy, managed to project a moderate image on key issues such as abortion (whose outright ban Vance has advocated in the past) to an audience to whom he was making himself known. One of the phrases for which the Democrat will be remembered this campaign also arrived: That’s when they asked Harris in an otherwise quite friendly interview, whether she would have done anything differently than Biden had she been in charge for the last four years. “Right now I can’t think of anything specific,” said the candidate, as if her assistants had not passed on the surveys that say that a majority of the electorate is dissatisfied with the progress of the country, especially with the economy, and that they blame of those problems to the still president of the United States.
Another of the great paradoxes of this campaign is the difference in the weight of the words of both rivals. While a single phrase seems capable of shattering the Democrat’s chances of victory, nothing Trump says, no matter how crazy it may be, translates into a loss of support in the polls. Not even the hoax that the Haitian migrants from Springfield (Ohio) They eat their neighbors’ pets, nor the constant threats of revenge against their political enemies, nor the flirtations with Hitler. Not even his strange praise this week of the genitals of legendary golfer Arnold Palmer.
It’s as if Trump’s followers take their leader seriously, but they don’t always take him literally. The last test came this Friday at the last minute, with the publication of the three hours of conversation between the Republican candidate and the announcer of podcast most famous in the United States, Joe Rogan, who in 2022 refused to interview the former president because he considered him a “threat to democracy.” It was the first assassination attempt at an outdoor rally, according to Rogan, which made him change his mind. In the conversation between the two, Trump said that he saw no reason to rule out life on Mars, assured that in the polls “there is probably a lot of fraud” and insisted once again that the elections he lost against Biden were a robbery, despite that judges have denied it time and time again. “Those judges,” he said, “didn’t have what it takes to overturn an election.”
Given that words are of little use to her, Harris – who has raised the tone of her speech these days to the point of calling her opponent “fascist” while the most progressive among her people ruined her courtship of moderate Republicans disenchanted with Trump – will stick to the facts next Tuesday. The Democratic candidate has called an electoral event in Washington, on the Ellipse of the White House, the same land south of the presidential residence where her rival held a rally on January 6, 2021 that led to the assault on the Capitol.
Harris, who has been burning the remaining cartridges of fame (only this week he has risen Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen on stage), He hopes voters remember what happened on that dark day of American democracy before returning power to someone who has promised to be “dictator on the first day” in the Oval Office. It is not clear, however, that this rhetoric of “democracy in danger” is going to give as good results to the Democrats as in the legislative elections of 2022. The polls then predicted a “red tide” (red is the color of Republicans in this country) that was going to allow them to gain comfortable control of both Chambers, but the waters did not rise that much.
Tuesday’s event is, for the moment, the most symbolic event of the final stretch of Harris’ campaign, which this Saturday was accompanied by former first lady Michelle Obama, This Sunday he plans to be in Philadelphia, the most populated city in the most decisive state, Pennsylvania, and next Thursday he has a rally in Phoenix with the legends of northern music Los Tigres del Norte.
That same day, Trump will give a live interview to far-right television personality Tucker Carlson in Glendale, a municipality next to the capital of Arizona. During the rest of the week, the Republican candidate will take a final tour of the territories, from Georgia to Wisconsin or Nevada, in which the presidency of the United States will be decided. Which of the two will arrive the weekend before the vote on the back of the final one? momentum It is another of the great unknowns of the closest elections in the recent history of the United States.
